DEMO Time at LP&P

It was DEMO '08 audition time in our Boston office last week. Executive producer Chris Shipley was kind enough to spend the day in our offices meeting with our clients to determine if their offerings are strong enough to merit inclusion in the February DEMO conference. Chris has done this for us -- our version of "A Chorus Line" -- every year for many years, usually in Boston, but once in our Austin office. It has been great for our...

It's official: The Industry Standard is coming back

During the session at the Future of Business Media Conference on technology business media, Bob Carrigan, president of IDG Communications confirmed that the organization is bringing back The Industry Standard. The details are that a group of InfoWorld folks are developing social media platform to do predictions of what's going to happen in the market and using the brand that has a lot of history. There's a parallel effort now to build in advertising and promotion, and IDG is looking...

Liveblogging from The Future of Business Media

I'm in New York City today at the Future of Business Media event put on by the ContentNext organization. I was drawn because of the very specific focus on how business and trade media is changing because of social media and consolidation. The agenda is packed with top people from such organizations as Time Inc., Forbes, BusinessWeek, Conde Nast, Dow Jones, Reuters, CNBC, along with a lunchtime Q&A with Neil Cavuto. It should give some great insights into where the...

Social Media: Same Business, Different Distribution

Last night we held our annual Austin networking event and we had the pleasure of hosting Om Malik as our featured guest speaker. If there is anyone that has the credibility to comment on where social media is going - it's Om. As one of the most reputable business technology journalists in the industry, Om had the foresight more than five years ago to circumvent publishing outlets and start publishing his work online. I remember at the time when he...

So when do I get my check from Facebook?

No surprise the big business tech news story today is Microsoft's investment in Facebook. There is a lot of speculation on how this impacts Microsoft's ability to compete with Google. Oh, and it also means that Facebook now how has a valuation of $15B. Given they made $30M last year that means ... Oh gosh you know what it means! The bubble is back baby!!!! Start lighting up those cigars with hundred dollar bills! While Facebook has some great technology,...

Getting Social in Austin

What's great about having two offices is that you really can see how a corporate culture is consistent, but with a specific local flavor for each location. Our Austin team is right in the heart of downtown Austin, a block from famous 6th Street. The social nature of Austin comes through loud and clear whenever I visit, as we'll walk to various places for "happy hours" with our clients there rather than just have meetings. (You haven't lived until you've...

Whither SNW?

Last week marked another Storage Networking World Conference (SNW). This time, the conference was held at the Gaylord Texan Resort Hotel and Convention Center near Dallas, in Grapevine, Texas. Billed as the "world's largest and foremost storage networking event," SNW has become more of a reunion of sorts for many in the storage industry, especially in the vendor community. Although, finding out where former friends and colleagues end up transcends the vendor community as reporters and analysts take up new...

How Twitter is being used by the media

As I noted a little while ago, a specific area of the media evolution that I'm following is how traditional media is leveraging Twitter to inform its audiences. A great example is in the context of the horrible wildfires in southern California. Local public broadcasting station KPBS is using Twitter to give literally up to the minute updates on the numerous fires and their impact on public safety. Many media outlets have opened up Twitter streams to reach the surging...

Brand Management, Yankee Style

Because it’s well known that I am a Red Sox fanatic and own not one, but two, Yankee Hater hats (full disclosure of my biases), one of our folks forwarded me David Kiley’s piece in BusinessWeek entitled "Steinbrenner: A study in how Not to Build a Personal Brand." One of Kiley’s frustrations was Steinbrenner’s refusal to talk directly to the media, preferring instead to go through his publicist with statements. That didn’t concern me, as it is known he hasn’t...

More evidence of reliability of blogs

I'm always on the look-out for information and commentary on how consumers trust blogs relative to traditional media. The latest evidence comes from the Technorati report earlier this year, which showed that the number of non-mainstream blogs (meaning blogs not on traditional media sites) cracking the top 100 blogs is increasing. Based upon how Technorati ranks blogs, does this suggest that consumers are less discriminating about where they go for their information? In a story on Australian News.com.au, Graeme Samuel,...